Henry Gunther: The Last Soldier Killed in World War I
- Daniel Holland
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
“It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — but for one young man from Baltimore, peace came sixty seconds too late.”
Just after five o’clock on the morning of 11 November 1918, deep in the Compiègne Forest north of Paris, British, French, and German officials gathered inside a railway carriage. They had been brought together to sign the document that would end more than four years of relentless slaughter: the Armistice of World War I. The agreement declared that all hostilities would cease on land, at sea, and in the air, but not immediately. The ceasefire would take effect at 11 a.m., six hours later, to allow time for the message to reach the front lines.
Those six hours would prove to be some of the most tragic of the entire war. Thousands of men — from the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany — were killed in battles fought after peace had already been agreed. Among them was 23-year-old Henry Nicholas John Gunther, a bank clerk from Baltimore, who would be remembered as the final soldier to die in the Great War.
A reluctant soldier
Henry Gunther was born on 6 June 1895 in the working-class neighbourhood of Highlandtown, East Baltimore. His parents, George and Lina, were the American-born children of German immigrants. The family were part of a tight-knit Catholic community centred on the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish, a place where German was spoken as often as English, and where loyalty to the United States was sometimes questioned as anti-German sentiment spread across the nation during the war years.
Gunther worked as a bookkeeper at the National Bank of Baltimore, living a quiet life and engaged to be married. When America entered the war in 1917, he didn’t rush to enlist. Many German-Americans were wary of appearing disloyal, and some faced hostility or suspicion from their neighbours. But in September of that year, he was drafted into the army and assigned to the 313th Infantry Regiment of the 79th Division, known locally as “Baltimore’s Own.”
His organisational skills earned him a role in the supply department, managing clothing distribution, and he was promoted to sergeant. Yet, a single letter would change everything.
The intercepted letter
While serving at Camp Meade, Gunther wrote a candid letter to a friend back home, warning him about the harsh realities of military life. “The trenches are miserable,” he wrote, “and you would be wise to do anything you can to avoid it.” Unfortunately for Gunther, the letter was intercepted by a military censor and passed up the chain of command.
The army viewed such remarks as defeatist, even treasonous. He was swiftly demoted from sergeant to private and transferred from his comfortable supply role to the front line in France. The humiliation weighed heavily on him. Friends described him as withdrawn and moody, “brooding over his lost stripes,” as one comrade put it. The Baltimore Sun journalist and future novelist James M. Cain, who later interviewed Gunther’s company, wrote that he “became obsessed with a determination to make good before his officers and fellow soldiers.”]
Redemption at the eleventh hour
By the autumn of 1918, Gunther’s regiment was part of the Meuse–Argonne offensive, the largest and bloodiest American operation of the war. Over a million U.S. soldiers fought in the offensive, alongside 800,000 French troops, pushing through heavily fortified German lines. The fighting was brutal, cold, muddy, and unrelenting.
Gunther survived 47 days of this nightmare. He could have returned home after suffering a shrapnel injury to his hand, but refused evacuation. “He insisted on staying to help his Army brothers,” said his grand-niece, Carol Gunther Aikman, decades later. “I think this alone demonstrates his courage and his love for his country.”
On the morning of 11 November 1918, Gunther’s company was near the village of Ville-devant-Chaumont, north of Verdun. At 10:44 a.m., word reached them: the Armistice had been signed, and all fighting was to cease at 11. Just sixteen minutes to go.
Then, inexplicably, Gunther decided to attack.
According to witnesses, he told his men he was going to “take out that machine gun post.” His comrades tried to stop him, some even shouted warnings, but he pressed on, armed with his Browning automatic rifle. As he approached, the German soldiers, aware that peace was only moments away, waved their arms and shouted in broken English, telling him to turn back. They even fired warning shots.
Gunther didn’t stop. He fired a few rounds, and the Germans, perhaps fearing an ambush, returned fire. He was struck and killed instantly. The time was 10:59 a.m.
The last casualty of World War I
General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, recorded Henry Gunther as the final American, and possibly the last Allied soldier of any nation, to die in World War I. He was posthumously reinstated to the rank of sergeant and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and a divisional citation for gallantry.
In 1923, his body was brought home from France and buried at Baltimore’s Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery. His gravestone reads simply:
“Henry Gunther — 79th Division — November 11, 1918.”
For years, his story was known only within his family and among veterans of his division. Then, as historians began revisiting the final day of the war, Gunther’s name came to symbolise the senseless loss of those last, unnecessary hours.
In 2008, a memorial was erected in Lorraine, near the exact spot where he fell. Two years later, on Armistice Day 2010, a second plaque was dedicated at his gravesite in Baltimore.
A tragic pattern across the front
Gunther’s death was not unique. Across the front lines, thousands of soldiers continued fighting despite knowing the war was all but over. Historian Joseph Persico, who examined records from that day, estimated that 2,738 soldiers were killed and 11,000 wounded in the six hours between the signing and the enforcement of the Armistice. Many of these casualties were the result of Allied commanders pushing for one last victory or seeking to secure better positions before the ceasefire took effect.
One infamous example was General William Wright of the U.S. 89th Division, who ordered his men to capture the French town of Stenay so his troops could make use of the town’s bathhouses. The attack, fought after the Armistice had already been signed, resulted in 365 casualties, including 61 deaths, all for the sake of a wash.
Even artillery units fired their remaining shells rather than haul the ammunition away. One U.S. Navy railway gun fired its final shot at 10:57:30 a.m., calculated to land behind German lines seconds before the ceasefire.
The last to fall
The toll of that final morning was grimly symbolic. The last French soldier to die, Augustin Trébuchon, was killed by a sniper at 10:45 a.m. as he carried a message telling his comrades that “soup will be served at 11:30.” Embarrassed by the timing of his death, French authorities later backdated his grave to 10 November.
In Belgium, Private George Lawrence Price, a Canadian, was shot by a sniper at 10:58 a.m. while advancing into Ville-sur-Haine, just two minutes before the Armistice took effect.
Private George Edwin Ellison, a British soldier of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, was killed around 9:30 a.m. near Mons, Belgium, fittingly, the same area where the British Expeditionary Force had first fought the Germans in 1914.
And in Belgium’s Kluizen sector, Marcel Toussaint Terfve, a Belgian soldier, fell to machine gun fire at 10:45 a.m..
Together, these men, Ellison, Trébuchon, Terfve, Price, and Gunther, form a tragic fraternity: the last victims of the “War to End All Wars.”
Why didn’t the killing stop?
The question that haunts historians is simple: why didn’t the killing stop at once?
When German representatives pleaded for an immediate ceasefire during the negotiations, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the French commander-in-chief, refused. He insisted that hostilities continue until 11 a.m. sharp, “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”
His reasoning was partly logistical — orders had to reach far-flung units — but also symbolic. The Allies wanted a definitive end, one marked by a specific, dramatic moment. The cost of that symbolism was staggering. Thousands of men who had survived four years of war were sent to die on a day that the world would later celebrate as peace.
Legacy of Henry Gunther
In Baltimore, Gunther’s death became both a source of sorrow and pride. The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1858 was named in his honour. Each year, on 11 November, visitors leave flags and flowers at his grave, remembering not only the end of the war but the man who became its final casualty.
Gunther’s story endures because it captures the contradictions of war: courage mingled with futility, loyalty twisted by bureaucracy, and the search for redemption in a world gone mad. His final act — whether viewed as brave or tragic — has come to symbolise the madness of those closing moments when peace was so near, yet death still claimed its due.
As the historian Persico put it, “The Armistice was signed in silence and celebrated in blood.”
And for Henry Gunther, the war ended just sixty seconds too late.
Sources
Persico, Joseph E. Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax. Random House, 2004.
Cain, James M., The Baltimore Sun, interviews with 313th Regiment survivors, 1919.
U.S. Army Center of Military History: Meuse–Argonne Offensive Reports (1918–1919).
“Henry Gunther: The Last Man Killed in the Great War.” Maryland Historical Society Archives.
“Signing of the Armistice, 11 November 1918.” Wikimedia Commons.
“Henry Gunther Memorial, Chaumont-devant-Damvillers.” American Battle Monuments Commission, 2008.
“Armistice Day Casualties.” Imperial War Museum Collections.
“George Lawrence Price and the Last Casualties of the Great War.” Canadian War Museum, 2018.
